Apple Taking 'App Store' Battle to Foes Large and Small

Apple's bid for an injunction against Amazon's AppStore failed, but Apple's battle for the trademarked term has hit small fish like wireless-app disty GetJar, too.

Apple may have suffered a setback in its bid for exclusive rights to the term "app store" this week with a federal judge denied its bid for an injunction against Amazon's AppStore, but the iPhone maker's nomenclature war is being waged on many fronts.

Take wireless-application distributor GetJar. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company was sent a cease-and-desist letter from Apple on June 22 over GetJar's use of "App Store" on its website, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In place of "App Store," Apple's lawyers suggested that GetJar use the not-quite-as-catchy "mobile download service" or "application download service," according to the Journal, which reviewed the letter from Apple counsel at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in New York.

Apple registered a trademark for "App Store" in 2008. As the popularity of online marketplaces for mobile applications has grown, Apple has been increasingly involved in legal and PR battles over its ownership of the term with tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft, as well as smaller companies like GetJar.

Apple's arguments for its sole ownership of the term have sometimes taken on a surreal tone.

"Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words 'app store' together denote a store for apps," Apple wrote in a May filing with a California district court, seeking to show that "app store" was not a generic term.

For its part, GetJar isn't buckling to pressure from Apple's legal team.

"GetJar has been in the business of offering apps to consumers since 2005, well before Apple, and helped to pioneer the model that the general public understands as an app store today," GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs said, according to the Journal.

"We have built a strong, global and growing business around this model, and plan to continue to use the phrase "app store" to describe what we do. This move by Apple is yet more proof that the company tends to act as if it is above the law, and even as one of the smaller players in the space, we won't be bullied by Apple."

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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